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Honeymoon Over For Google?
scubacuda writes "Business Week has an article on some of the challenges Google faces as it gains popularity. For a while, things were looking good: unobtrusive ads, a hardware search appliance, and the fact that 'google' has become a verb (like xerox, kleenex, hoover, etc.). Now, Yahoo! has dropped the 'exclusive' part of its contract, Overture won a series of key contracts, Verity has announced a deal to purchase Inktomi's assets, and Y! announced it was buying Inktomi's web-search business. And other engines such as WiseNut, Teoma, and FAST now mimic Google's 'popularity placement technology.'"
They may start to see more channenges, but by and large people will still "google" things. People who always use google will as long as they remain a great search engine...if they start letting the results slip, then all bets are off.
Google has IMHO the best search-engine technology around. However, the time is coming for more intelligent engines--content based searching is around the corner, and I'm sure that development is being done at Google. I want to search for pictures by content (not by filename). I want a larger set of query commands (NEAR, etc). Kartoo has an intuitive (and addicting) interface, and the ties it generates are... cool.
I don't think google losing some contracts will mean very much. Anyone can piggy back off of them, and if they can make a better product, more power to them, but I think google is around to stay.
Any word on an IPO?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Is whatever happened to Alta Vista. Remember when they ruled the search engine universe?
:-(
I first heard of Google when I got a semi-hysterical letter from Assembler God Steve Gibson raving about it.
I didn't abandon AV until after their second edition of Personal Alta Vista insisted on using my browser (where the first edition used a little window) and engendered a whole bunch of 505 errors and became useless.
They HAD to add a layer of complexity...
So whatever DID happen to Alta Vista?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
"I for one hope that google lasts - I would even pay a small amount if it would help keep them going"
Gotta wonder what it would take to dethrone Google, thouogh.
Personally, I think their image search is great. If they'd beef that up a bit, I'd be seriously considering a subscription not unlike the kind Slashdot has. $5 for 1,000 image searches or something like that. The catch is that it'd have to be better than the one today. Perhaps if they had a rewards system where you could earn searches by taking pics around the web and logging meta-data for them or something.
Google uses (at the last count I've seen) over 50 different factors in deciding what ranking a website should get on a certain search term. Part of their monthly rankings dance is rebalancing the importance of these factors to try to maintain the integrity of the results. Searchking's earlier lawsuit was over the effects of one earlier dance. PageRank is only the most visible of the components deciding a page's score, due to it's ingeniousness and to it being the only quantitative data released about the evaluation process (because of the google toolbar).
Also, don't forget about google's wildly successful Pigeon rank system.
I agree. Google holds *too* much sway on the Web. Their listings either make or break a web site. I know that Google does some very wierd things with some of my listings (first page one day, not in the directory the next), and there's literally nobody to contact, and nothing that I can do about it. I know that other people are in the same boat. I'm all for multiple search engines.
There are tons of "races" like that on the Internet. Google gets to decide the winners. Yes, it is just silly fun, but the point is that the masses accept google as the definitive source.
--naked
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
I think their News search is downright revolutionary. Not only do I get news categorized by what people really want to see but I can instantly check out viewpoints from all sides at the same time.
Its now my primary news source.
But I'm saddened to see yet another Slashdotter using Windows NT 5.1. Surely you can tear yourselves away from the soft, familiar womb that is Windows.... Try it, give it a go, be adventurous. You might never leave the town your were born in, but do something crazy, wild, exciting in your life....
Ya know, I'm kinda getting sick of always seeing this on slashdot.
So I happen to be surfing on my windows box. Yippee! My linux boxes I mostly use as servers (web/mail/firewall),coding and work (I'm a sysadmin in a mostly Sun shop) because that's what they're best at (not to mention one is a P200 that I don't even dare launch X on). I use my windows box to do net stuff (cuz face it, alot of browser plugins and such arent available on windows), gaming and graphics work. I'm thinking of even getting a Mac to do my graphics work instead of doing it on Windows.
Linux is good for some things, Windows for others and Macs for other things. I use whatever platform is best for what I want to do. No OS is the be all and end all of operating systems. They all have their different strengths and weaknesses. So be adventurous, open your mind, don't be narrowminded.
Windows user since 1990
Unix user since 1991 (AIX)
Linux user since 1993-94
Solaris user since 1998
and possible future Mac user
It's better to burn out than to fade away
This is not true, as many Canadian users have known for a while and many Australian users such as myself have just discovered. Google now redirects the front page (www.google.com) to a country-specific front page based on your IP address. Sure, it's a nice service to have local information available (the paid advertisements down the side change to local advertisements, amongst other things), but it really sucks that you're forced to use it. Most users don't know to change their bookmark to http://www.google.com/intl/en/ to return to the "real" Google, so they're stuck with it. This was the number one reason why i changed from Alta Vista to Google in the first place, and now i'm really wondering whether i should stick with it. raging.com is Alta Vista's minimal search, and it's just as fast and sleek as google, AND it doesn't assume just because you come from 203.x.x.whatever you're automatically interested in Australian content.
I got a sig so you would remember me.
If you're using Windows...
:, it searches a dictionary instead of Google).
:-)
As long as you don't mind the name, Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar rocks.
Of COURSE, like any useful search utility, it defaults to Google; but unlike many others, it has a HUGE number of other engines, and lets you add as many more as you want, distinguishing what type of search you want to do by little features of your search (for example, if your "search" looks like a calculator expression, it'll just replace the expression with the answer; if your search ends with a
The neatest part? It sits in your Start bar, not in your browser window -- so it takes up less useful space, and doesn't need your browser to be open.
Oh, and it works with any browser, not just IE.
I, of course, use it almost entirely with Google -- but this seems to disprove your assertion that if someone else had a nice search bar Google wouldn't be relevant.
Try it! It's good.
-Billy
Don't forget Froogle (http://froogle.google.com) too! There always seems to be something new and tasty coming out of Google labs... :)
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
how could a company that used Dilbert as a mascot on their logo - ever have their business begin to slip?! :)
Seriously tho - I think Google has a good chance of sticking around just because they have such a large user base - which is mostly due to the fact that A LOT of people who search for "things" don't want to look at a big pile of crap like Alta Vista or Yahoo (although I like yahoo's other features). But the fact remains if I want to look for "fish" I don;t want to a site like Yahoo that has hella ads and flashing images and links ALL OVER THE PAGE. I just want to bring up a page that has a field where I type in what I want and THEN get a page full of ACCURATE links.
I think if google was going to start losing money they could very easily add on a "google-groups" feature and "google - email" and keep a significant amount of people.
Ave Molech Setting
I really love google. I remember when AltaVista became a junky, bolated portal loaded with ads and cruft. Google was like a breath of fresh air--light, fast, and accurate.
.NET, 1.5" all stump google), date limits, etc.
The quibbles I have with Google are the lack of more advanced search features. This is a design choice to keep thinks fast.
Here's an idea: a paid subscription to Google (GooglePro?) to allow searches with pattern matching, term proximity, non-alpha characters (C#,
Keep the good and add more real features (more steak for more $, not the AltaVista disaster of artificial sizzle only).
Changing the wording of their logo like that makes it appear that you are trying to capture misspelled traffic for your own benefit. I fail to see how it was in any way a parody aside from the changing of the letters and hawking your links and providing an interface to their engine that can easily be construed as "intentionally confusing" to users.
Hammer of Truth
This seems to me to be a non-issue. So it gives you an Australian version of Google. So what? I went to www.google.com.au, it looks the same as regular Google, by default it still searches the entire Internet.... The only thing that seems to be different is the *additional* option to search only Aussie sites. The ads looked the same too (and if you get ads for services you could actually purchase locally, what's the downside?). I don't get what the problem is. In fact, it's probably better because you wouldn't get DMCA removals and such.
Omnes arx vestrum sunt adiuncta nobis.
People love google...Everyone is now using it...
"Back in the day" everyone used Altavista. The boolean searches were unparalleled and it found things no other search engine could find. I also would pay a small amount to keep Google going. i haven't found anything that comes close to Google's ability to find what I'm looking for. But for years I said the same thing about Altavista...I'm not saying Google's time is up yet, but there have been others before that haven't fared very well.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
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